004 ... in which I continue reading Ulysses one page per day one day at a time, and chronicle my reading by quoting my favorite sentence and word from each page. Each post chronicles five days of reading.
Day 16; pg 16
The seas’ ruler, he gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the smokeplume of the mailboat vague on the bright skyline and a sail tacking by the Muglins.
Hard to decide on a favorite word; it's either smokeplume or Muglins (and this, I think, is the first occurrence for me in which the sentence I chose also holds my favorite word).
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Day 17; pg 17
—The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen answered.
Jarring sentence! I allmost chose the sentence All. Not just any writer can write a one-word sentence that fits the context of the narrative in both a stylistic/aesthetic sense and thematically. The word "all" is used many times on this page. Do you believe at all, Haines is asking Dedalus, even if you don't believe it all?
f.w. = waistcoatpocket. I believe I allmost chose all.
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Day 18; pg 18
Symbol of the apostles in the mass for pope Marcellus, the voices blended, singing alone loud in affirmation: and behind their chant the vigilant angel of the church militant disarmed and menaced her heresiarchs.
A friend informed me that the above sentence I picked for Day 18 is referring to this — beautiful music there. The sentence preceding this one ends with "a chemistry of stars"—an intriguing idea/image. I like the odd syntax at the end of the sentence above as well.
f.w. = heresiarch
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Day 19; pg 19
He scrambled up by the stones, water glistening on his pate and on its garland of grey hair, water rilling over his chest and paunch and spilling jets out of his black sagging loincloth.
First time I read this in '09 I don't recall that there had been a search for a drowning victim in the bay near the Martello Tower. The "He" in this sentence has been observed just prior on this page walking "frogwise" in the water along the rocks, perhaps feeling with his hands for a body?
f.w. = rotto
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Day 20; pg 20
I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one livid final flame.
The first chapter break occurs here on pg 20. A new character, Cochran, is introduced. And shortly thereafter we hear "the thud of Blake's wings of excess."
f.w = sweettoned
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Reading Ulysses index
In fact, referencing my comment on Hamlet & Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow, this ("I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one livid final flame") is undoubtedly the quote I was thinking that Pynchon refers to on the opening page of GR - "He's afraid of the way the glass will fall-soon-it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace. But coming down in total blackout, without one glint of light, only great invisible crashing."
ReplyDeletePrefiguring the Nightgown scene in Ulysses and the rocket in GR.